Lightroom Q&A Day

Q. Matt, is there any chance you’ll update your presets for the Lightroom 3 Beta?

A. I’ll definitely update them. I may wait until the final version of LR3 comes out though (please don’t ask me when) The process version has caused the old sharpening presets to be outdated and too harsh.

Q. When creating web galleries in Lightroom, it seems to only export photos at 240 ppi, which makes for a pretty big, slow loading file on my web server. I’ve been re-exporting 72ppi files, then re-importing them and using those in my web gallery. Is there a better way?

A. There sure is. Basically it doesn’t matter what PPI (pixels per inch) the web photo is. Generally, PPI only comes into play when you talk about printed document sizes. Your monitor screens don’t have inches, they have pixels so pixels per inch only matters when inches matter (in print). So whether an 800×600 image is 72ppi or 240ppi, the pixel dimensions don’t change. It’s still 800×600 no matter what and the file size is still the same. If you don’t believe me then try it out yourself. Open a photo in Photoshop. Go to Image > Image Size and check the resolution (probably 240ppi for one of the photos you mentioned). Then go to File > Save As and choose JPEG and set the quality to something like 8.

Now go to Image > Image size again. Turn off the Resample checkbox. Now change the resolution to 72. Notice pixel dimensions (which control file size) don?t change. Now save that as a JPEG (with a different name) with a quality of 8. When you look at both files they should have the same file size.

Q. When the full version of Lightroom 3 comes out, will I be able to get the work I’ve done in the Lightroom 3 beta into it?

A. Yes. Adobe has always given us the ability to move our catalogs from the beta into the full version and I’d have to assume they’ll do the same here.

Q. I’ve reprocessed some files from Lightroom 2 in the Lightroom 3 beta. So now I have duplicates of the files now in two versions of Lightroom. What should I do?

A. That’s a tough one. One version of LR has no knowledge of the other version. So it’s up to you to figure out which one you want to keep and go delete the other one. If you haven’t made a physical copy of the photo, then just press the Delete key and remove from the Library, but not the actual drive. Unfortunately, there’s no automatic fix for this though.

Q. You were talking about keyboard shortcuts the other day, and mentioned something about camera profiles being so handy. They’re the first thing I do and it makes me want a quick keyboard way to get to them. Any ideas?

A. You can’t assign a keyboard shortcut to them, but you can create a preset. In fact, I have right here. Then you can always assign that preset upon import if you don’t want to think about it in the future.

Matt is the Vice President of Photography for onOne Software and a Tampa-based photographer. He's a best selling author of over 20 books and teaches Lightroom and Photoshop at seminars and conferences around the world.

I’ve finally installed the GR (general release) of Version 3 and sure enough, I was able to transfer my LR2 catalog over to LR3. I followed your directions above to get the catalog from LR3 beta Ver2, but the first beta release of Lr3 is expired.

Did my catalog from the first beta release automatically update into the second release? If not, how to I get to that catalog and import it into my GR LR3?

Hi Matt, all your stuff is really a great help!!
Question for you:
I’ve noticed that when I adjust the “Fill” slider in the Develop Mode of Lighroom (I’m using Lightroom 2 for now), that I often have to go back and readjust the color balance. Do you have any idea why that is?
When I look at all the tutorials and tips by you and others online I never see that mentioned. Of course I usually set my whitebalance first, adjust exposure for the high values, blacks for the dark values, and recovery if needed… but I find if I need to open the shadows and brighten it a bit more, I get a color shift I have to correct. I’m working on commercial interiors where the color needs to be right; but even on scans of other travel or people stuff, I find this happening. What gives, oh wise one?
thanks, blaine

Thanks for the great resource that this site has become. I don’t currently use LR much right now but am thinking of utilizing it for controlling the portfolio for our studio which has 4 photographers. Matt, or Anyone… have experience syncing folders from different Macs to one base Mac that will be host for the LR Library. We want to each have our portfolio folder on our own machines that will be in sync with the master LR Library on a consistent basis over the network. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Every once in a while when I finish working on my files, I move them over to a portable drive and backup on another external drive. Sometimes though, I’ll revisit those thumbnails later and I’ll get the “photo is off-line or missing” message even though I’ve reconnected them to the new folder location. Then I have to go through my file system to drill down to the image folder and reconnect them. So basically…

Q: Is there any easier way to reconnect a Lightroom folder with it’s source files once they’ve been moved off of your hard drive?

Every time you reconnect your external HDD, the drive letter may change. If it’s changed then LR cannot see the old files anymore and you have to re-map them. The workaround that I can think of is assigned it with drive letter say X. And every time you connect that drive, make sure the drive letter is X. Then you don’t have to re-map it in LR.

Hi Matt, I’ve got another Q for you. I’ve found that when importing photos into Lightroom 3, I can’t find the option to select the files I want to download by date.

For example, say I go to Europe; Paris one day, London the next and Rome the next. I have 3 different sets of photos on my memory card that I want to name and keyword differently. In LIghtroom 2 I would just select the date of the photos I wanted to import, and Boom! I’ve got everything from Sunday, June 8th etc… In Lightroom 3, as far as I can tell, my only option is to individually check each photo that I want to import. Is there a better way? I can’t find the “Import photos from this date” button anywhere!

“I?ve reprocessed some files from Lightroom 2 in the Lightroom 3 beta. So now I have duplicates of the files now in two versions of Lightroom. What should I do”

I’ve been giving this issue a lot of thought lately because my LR3b catalogue is growing leaps and bounds with the reprocessed files.

My Question:
When the final version of LR is released it’ll obviously accept and update previous version catalogs. If I first update my LR3b catalog file and then import the LR2 catalog, can I just delete (not accept) duplicate catalog files upon import without affecting the original image files?